Viewed historically, the West within this global system can be understood as a modern “Grand Inquisitor.” The Inquisition exercised its power by defining orthodoxy, policing heresy, and punishing deviation, claiming moral legitimacy while enforcing coercion.
The peaceful protests that emerged in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar in response to severe economic hardships sit at the intersection of long-standing external factors, first and foremost a regime of sanctions entrenched over time. A real, structural internal discontent, which together explain their origin and intensification.
Mechanisms that Accelerate Crises and Multiply Instability
These realities are neither constructed nor abstract; they are lived experiences that, historically, have made the Bazaar a sensitive indicator of political legitimacy in Iran. Yet, the evolution of these protests into broader instability cannot be understood in isolation from the geopolitical context in which Iran has been immersed for decades.
Continuous external pressure, through economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, regional confrontations, and persistent narrative framing, has substantially weakened Iran’s economy. Under such conditions, authentic grievances are inevitably amplified and internationalized. This ongoing external pressure, situated within the post-9/11 paradigm of the “Axis of Evil” and supported by the United States, the United Kingdom, NATO, and Israel, has substantially weakened Iran’s economy and reduced the state’s capacity to respond effectively to internal dissent.
External political signals, global media amplification, and a normative language centred on democracy and human rights transform local discontent into a matter of international concern. This process does not require direct orchestration on the ground; it operates through established mechanisms that accelerate crises and multiply instability.
The Asymmetry of Sovereignty
This modus operandi is not unique to Iran. Similar patterns have emerged in numerous non-Western states, where internal dissent intersects with external strategic interests. In these cases, the West seeks to create the impression that it rarely generates unrest, yet systematically reserves the right to interpret, elevate, and exploit it.
National sovereignty thus becomes conditional: respected only insofar as political outcomes align with Western norms and interests. This raises a deeper question: why is such intervention almost exclusively directed at non-Western societies? Western states categorically reject foreign funding, narrative manipulation, or political engineering within their own borders, yet normalize these practices elsewhere under the banner of universal values. The result is an asymmetry of sovereignty, where Western nations enjoy political inviolability while others are subjected to constant external reshaping.
Colonialism under the Mask of Democracy
In this sense, contemporary interventionism does not represent a break with colonial history, but its transformation. Classical colonialism relied on territorial occupation and direct rule; the current model operates through economic leverage, institutional influence, and moral authority. Control is no longer imposed through conquest, but through compliance—achieved via sanctions, civil society engagement, and narrative dominance.
Democratic values, though genuine in principle, become instruments when applied selectively and strategically. Internal disunity is not entirely created from the outside, but is shaped, accelerated, and exploited within a global order that denies non-Western states the same political autonomy the West claims for itself. Functionally, if not nominally, this represents a continuation of colonial logic—procedural rather than territorial, moralized rather than explicit. Viewed historically, the West within this global system can be understood as a modern “Grand Inquisitor.” The Inquisition exercised its power by defining orthodoxy, policing heresy, and punishing deviation, claiming moral legitimacy while enforcing coercion.
Today, Western powers define globally what constitutes legitimate governance, acceptable democracy, and human rights compliance. Deviations from these standards are framed as illegitimate or dangerous, and corrective measures are applied to enforce compliance. What once regulated the soul now governs states; what once persecuted heretics now targets nations that deviate from the imperium’s standards.
The tools have changed, but the principle remains recognizable: an authority claiming universal moral legitimacy exercises judgment and control beyond its own borders. This dynamic ultimately reveals a process of continuous empire. When an empire reaches its apex, it encounters internal exhaustion: demographic stagnation, declining social cohesion, and a diminished capacity of its own population to sustain expansion, sacrifice, and reproduction.
At that point, vitality must be sourced externally. Instability beyond the empire’s borders becomes functional rather than accidental. By fostering or amplifying disunity elsewhere—through economic pressures, political interference, or narrative destabilization—the empire does not merely weaken rival states, but produces human displacement.
The result is no longer the creation of subjects or slaves in the classical sense, but of refugees.
These uprooted populations are then absorbed into the heart of the empire, replenishing labor markets, sustaining demographic growth, and compensating for internal decline. In this context, migration is no longer an unintended humanitarian consequence, but a structural outcome of imperial maintenance.
The empire exports instability and imports human capital, maintaining moral distance through a narrative of rescue, asylum, and benevolence. Insurrection beyond its borders thus becomes a mechanism of self-preservation. The empire does not need to conquer territory outright; it only needs to destabilize it enough to maintain the inward flow of people.
From this perspective, contemporary interventionism completes the transformation of empire from territorial domination to systemic dependence. Where past empires relied on chains, armies, and tribute, the modern empire relies on permanent crises. Disunity abroad sustains internal cohesion; external collapse feeds continuity at the centre.
This is not a byproduct of foreign policy, but an emergent logic of empire in its terminal phase: an empire no longer capable of reproducing itself organically, and therefore drawing life from the fractures it helps create beyond its own borders.
